NOWADAYS transducers (sensors and actuators),
as defined by ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451 standards, are
employed in various application fields: industrial, biomedical,
environmental, energy, and transportation, etc. The literature
highlights the presence of numerous contributions to research
activity. Meanwhile, the international community has shown
growing interest in smart sensors.
Smart sensor is a term used currently to refer to a
sensing device capable of acquiring and simultaneously
processing data. It is the basis for homecare or telemedicine
applications, process automation, intelligent transportation
systems and environmental monitoring.
The ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451-x standards (previously known
as IEEE 1451.x) are a family of smart transducer interface
standards. These standards allow designers to project smart
sensor networks and applications using different protocols,
such as XMPP, TCP/IP, HTTP, and Web services to perform
communications among sensors and/or actuators. Applications
can access Transducer Electronic Data Sheets (TEDS) for
sensor identification and system configuration. One of the
standards on signal treatments can be performed to enable
better interactions among smart sensors and actuators. Another
standard regulates the communications among applications
and sensors integrated with Radio Frequency IDentification
(RFID)-based systems. Thus the ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451-x
is a growing family of standards responsible for the development
of smart sensors. It involves developing technology
for a seamless connection among smart sensors and networks.
In order to meet industry’s needs, new members of the family
of standards are being developed, and meanwhile some of
the standards are under revision